English Heritage refuse to examine evidence

Here is the latest response from English Heritage that has been sent to me by Michael Bernard. I have had no correspondence whatsoever from their so called experts:English Heritage refusal.
I have agreed with Michael that I will produce a document for him and will respond in due course and have copied John Grehan. I am not aware of any discussion having taken place with anyone connected to the new battlefield or Invasion site or any site visits or discussions with any military historians. Having reported in-camera for the last eighteen months on this subject it is strange that this organisation appears to believe they have no duty of due diligence or transparency to the public at large or the nation when it comes to such an important issue. I think we need to look closer into what has happened here replying to such an outrageous document. The fact they have used a document posted on the Battlefields Trust site, designed to stop the Telegraph publishing, to claim there is no case, needs me to be discussed with the Battlefields Trust when they admit the Battlefields Trust have not investigated the sites either. We met them recently with witnesses present to confirm our understanding of their view and I need to clarify their position before responding to the press.

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5 thoughts on “English Heritage refuse to examine evidence”

As early as the second sentence in the report, there is an attempt to discredit the case for the application in the following words:

The application has been prompted by the threat of the destruction of the postulated Norman encampment (prior to the battle) at Wilting Hill, Upper Wilting which is on the site of the proposed Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR); also the threat to the integrity of the postulated site of the Battle of Hastings at Crowhurst (which is outside of the road corridor).

C.S.Lewis coined a word for this technique. The word, would you believe it, is bulverism. Lewis describes what prompted ihim and explains the term as follows:

You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism”. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — “Oh you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment”, E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.

This is not the first time such perfunctory dismissal of a reasoned argument has been used in planning-related issues.

Thank you Richard very useful to know I will use that at an appropriate time. A similar attempt was used at the public inquiry where Dr Gardiner sought to use Occams Razor to dismiss the case – that didn’t go anywhere either as there are sharp brains this side of the table too.